Vince McMahon's 20 Biggest Real-Life Feuds

19. Vince Russo

The WWE was in poor financial standing in 1996 and throughout most of 1997, but when Vince Russo turned from magazine writer to television writier, his fresh take on the product helped turn WWE's ratings back around. Vince McMahon empowered Russo as the head writer of WWE during the Attitude Era until Russo bolted for WCW in the middle of the night in late 1999. Citing multiple factors including an increased workload that the new SmackDown show brought without an increase in pay, Russo had negotiated an offer from WCW and left McMahon for the competition in October of 1999. McMahon viewed this as the ultimate betrayal while Russo viewed Vince as a cold-hearted, ruthless promoter who did not care about his employee personally. The straw that broke the camel's back for Russo, as he has claimed in multiple interviews since '99, is when McMahon did not appreciate nor accept Russo's concerns of additional stress being put on his family because of the additional workload. "Get a nanny," was McMahon's response to Russo. Since then, Russo has done some projects for WWE Network and other small affairs, but has not been welcomed back into the WWE family despite being a major influence in the company's turnaround from "financial peril" in 1997.